


the paths are long (even in death there is no ending to them)

by RocksCanFly



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Canon-typical multiple selves, Dream Bubbles, Experimental Style, Gen, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 22:03:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2041872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RocksCanFly/pseuds/RocksCanFly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are limp in his arms, having only the strength to bury your guilty cheek against his cool chest. The dream-sun above you doesn’t burn like it would in a sane world, but it is still hot, and he is so much grander and colder than you, and you seek your comfort where you can find it (as you always have, you stupid wriggler of a boy).</p><p>or</p><p>Equius Zahhak dies, and then he dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the paths are long (even in death there is no ending to them)

Your name is Equius Zahhak, and you are weary of dreams.

More so, you are weary of yourself.

Which is an easy task, when there are so many of you.

(you would think it odd, that so many souls could exist in the Void,

But you never learned about the void, did you? Because you were foolish, and prideful and it was after all, only a silly game)

That you could go back.

That you could find Aradia and throw yourself at her living feet and beg for her to show you the way _out._

And you know, oddly, that she is alive with the same certainty that you once knew she was dead and that she was not yet gone.

You would wonder about this, about pasts and futures and ancestors and the tenuous bonds between the Executioner and the Demoness, if you knew anything about any of these. But no one ever tells you anything.

Not really.

Well, nothing important.

You were never a player so much as a pawn. A hammer in the hand of the wielder (your chest rattles at hammers, and you wonder why).

 

* * *

 

Your name is

Your

You

[SYSTEM ERROR]

[CRASH IMMIENINT]

[STAND BY FOR REBOOT FUCKERS]

Your name is ARQUIUS.

There is a ~~girl troll empress cat thing friend~~ sprite in front of you. Technically, there are two. But you do not care about the green one, with its anger and shouting and reek of narcissism and self-loathing.

You care about the pink one in front of you, who is ~~highblood and noble and feral and yours~~ weird as hell

~~Achingly so.~~

You want to tell her(?) that you are sorry.

You- you do not think you WANT to remember what for.

You do not know if you are actually sorry. ~~Are you? Or are you just guilty guilty guilty because you failed failed and now she’s dead and you’re dead and you are the worst, the most awful, how how could you let him-~~

You are-

You are fairly sure you are sorry.

And that you want her to forgive you-

And that you ~~do NOT~~ deserve to be forgiven.

 

* * *

 

Your name is Equius Zahhak. You are six (?) sweeps old, and you have been dead for too long.

You were somewhere, and then you were somewhere else, and now you are here. You are looking out at the ocean at sunrise. Wet sand sticks to your face, and you have not been here before.

You lie on your side like a doll.

Blood seeps from your neck into the sand-

You don’t-

You don’t remember bleeding.

Perhaps it came after.

Or it is a metaphor.

Too much here is metaphor. It’s not fitting, and they are too indelicate and crass. The artifice of it all needs work.

A lot of work, you think, when he finds you and you cannot breathe for the life of you

(ha)

You would get up to-

Greet him. Kill him. Kneel for him. Something, anything besides lying on your side and choking on nothing like sea dweller scum on their first taste of true air.

You sense him behind you, hear the muffled thud of his knees hitting sand. You curl into yourself, away from him, in shame or fear or both you don’t know.

Long fingers pry at your own and-

You can breathe again.

He holds your wrists in one enormous hand. The other strokes at your neck, brushes sweaty hair from bruises and tacky blood.

You wonder if he removed your hands so he could finish strangling you himself.

(oh love, he whispers to the wind, and even now with only you and him and the void and rage and dreams you know he’s not speaking to you)

(oh love, he whispers, it didn’t up and have to be the way it will, but you keep following this script even when I go and blur the lines out so you cannot read them

What use is serendipity, my dear, he says softly, and his hands are on your flesh but his mind is a thousand years and miles away- when you have chosen fate every time?

BONE OF MY BONE. WHITE LARVA OF THIS SWOLLEN AND ROTTING HEART

why)

He picks you up gently, and his arms are stronger than they once were (but weren’t they strong enough, even then? Had they not proven their strength in that great battle, when you had looked upon his glory and known yourself to be forever lost in him? [when they had choked the life from you, in that later and petty battle that was less a fight than a surrender]).

His arms are longer, the muscle thicker. He has grown and you have frozen.

He whisper-screams incomprehensible pleas into the wind as he carries you through the dunes to his hive. You don’t know why he comes for you when he will not address you. You don’t know why you know it’s his hive- you’ve never seen it, not outside of these same dreams.

(this has happened before, the wind and sand and strange kindness of this troll. but you don’t really remember, no, you can only feel the echoes in your bones of a story too-oft told)

You are still bleeding, the blood drip-drop pattering down you neck and onto his arm and off his still-bony (so much of him even now is bone!) elbow and onto the soft sand.

You are limp in his arms, having only the strength to bury your guilty cheek against his cool chest. The dream-sun above you doesn’t burn like it would in a sane world, but it is still hot, and he is so much grander and colder than you, and you seek your comfort where you can find it (as you always have, you stupid wriggler of a boy).

You drift.

When you awaken (?) it is in his hive-not-hive. It’s too clean to be the hive of the boy you had so lovingly hated for a sweep and a half. No empty bottles sticky with sugar litter the floor, no sopor-slime pies or errant horns clutter the hallway. Scenes of scripture have been painted upon the walls, silks hung in the aspect of the tents of his creed’s carnival, bones and bones and bones fill the corners and lie in a high toppling pyre at the center of the entry block.

As he carries you past these, you see the colors of the silks, the paints of the murals on the walls. Your blood drips drips drips along the floor, and it fits so perfectly with the blue of his midnight sky that your breath is stolen from you yet again.

You know not if you choke on laughter or tears.

You decide it doesn’t matter.

But the green of the grass, of the trees and flowers and seaweed-

That matters.

You shift restlessly in his grip, and he presses you more tightly to his chest.

Till now he has addressed only the wind, the walls. Bone of his bone, pearl of his ocean and single bright shining star of his sky, he has called. The pale platitudes fall silent on his lips as he turns his eyes at last to you, and you cannot hope to read him.

But the claws on your skin and eyes trailing the lines of the scars that ring your throat and the drip drip drip of your blood mean something, even if you cannot discern the color.

Gravity invites you to curl closer to his chest as he ascends a spiraling staircase, and you accept the invitation gladly.

(He is so cool where your own pale and shining star was so warm, but he is warmer than the body you built for your not-truly-lover, and the dichotomy of the thought is so trite it makes your stomach turn)

 

* * *

 

When you awake next you are in a recupracoon.

You think for a moment- madly and hopefully and so, so stupidly- that you have awoken from a nightmare. You reach for your husktop to troll Nepeta; to tell her of what you have dreamed and seen and felt and know.

But your hand meets nothingness, as so much of you will always meet nothingness, and you remember:

He placed you here, set you in his own coon as soft and silent as a lusus with a new grub. Large, careful hands with sharp claws that smelled of new blood and old, dried sugar wrapped gauze around your neck, bandaged the wounds that could be reached. Cool lips pressed to your brow, and despite the half-hearted protests building in the back of your throat- _I am not worthy_ , and more pressingly, _how dare you, after you, you **took her** from me, when I gave myself wholly to you- you broke the contract and YOU TOOK HER FROM ME YOU BASTARD-_ you drift.

 

* * *

 

A dream within a dream:

You are you but older and wiser and from a more ancient time. Your duties are great and your master greater. But this woman and this unhappy accident of bone-and-bone and starlight that has been shattered between the two of you is greatest of all, larger and more wonderful and awful and terrifying than anything you have ever known, even the presence of your Empress.

It is serendipity at its cruelest.

And now she must be kept safe, though she spits and hates and rejects all of what you are, she must be kept safe because (and truly what a cruel mistress serendipity is!) you love her more than your own soul.

You could hide. If you were to truly try to secret yourself from your master he would never be able to find you. It is for her sake that you instead come willingly to him with an offer-a plea and a bargain. Yours to his for hers. That will be the deal.

And he laughs, because he always laughs, but a spark of precious sanity is in his eyes when he holds you by the hair and bites your lip to seal the deal that you’ve made with the disciple of the devil.

(It’s not all altruism or star-crossed pale romantic epic- you love and hate him, have always done so since the first day you came into his service and he let you kneel before him and painted a scene of the night sky and sea with your blood)

This way, though you may go to exile, you go not from him, not in this lifetime or any after.

As long as he leaves her be.

As long as-

He leaves her be.

 

* * *

 

A waking within a dream:

But he did _not_.

He has painted her in leaves and fields and vines in the illuminated scriptures that line the halls below you.

He did not leave her be, and you are no longer his.

You do not belong to him by honor or blood or bargain.

And you could leave.

You _should._

But he is tender at times, and cruel at others, and you find (oh sinful hateful worthless excuse for a moirail and descendant that you are!) that you still love him.

Your love does no keep you from turning from him when he seeks your eyes, biting your tongue to silence yourself when he seeks your voice. Though you are kitten-weak (hah!) from imagined (but no less real) blood loss and heat stroke and lack of air and the heavy weight of his mere presence, you keep as much of yourself from him as you are able.

He goads you, at times, with crass jokes and threats. You would expect him to beat you for your insubordination, your clenched teeth and stubborn silence. But he only ever touches you gently, as though you will break if he is not careful.

(He touches you like you once touched her, with infinite caution and gentleness and fear. You wonder what he could be afraid of- you cannot break in a dream. Not anymore than you have already been broken)

(Perhaps he is afraid that you will wake, and be gone from him)

(Perhaps you are a love-blind idiot who still clings to foolish dreams of gentleness from giants)

At times he pleads for your forgiveness, begging absolution for sins you can neither comprehend nor pardon. The slump of his shoulders and open terror and pain in his eyes as he clasps your hands between his in these lucid, panicked minutes makes you wish you could.

At moments he will appear, suddenly and without warning, with the drooping eyes and sleepy smile of his addict days. He’ll take something or other from the room, or leave something, and then he will be gone. Once, you called out to him in these moments.

No recognition crossed his eyes when he turned to you, and without a word or one of his enigmatic smiles, he was gone.

He shows no indication of remembering the incident when he returns.

You decide it is best not to question it.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t fuck you.

You want him to-

To humiliate you, use you, degrade you but

He doesn’t.

You know what he does to Pyrope.

He whispers it in your ear in daylight, when he curls up beside you and holds you close (but never close enough).

And you have never hated anyone so deeply.

But you hate him, and her, and everything and everyone keeping his body from your body

But most of all you hate yourself, for wanting it- For wanting his hands on you, when you know (viscerally) whose blood they are covered in.

And yet you cannot help but want him.

(all you want is to be of use)

[all you really want is to be wanted]

 

* * *

 

This is how you spend the hours between life and death:

You wander the expanse of his hive, touching the walls as if understanding of the scenes he paints can leach through your skin.

When you tire of scripture and flaking blood, you leave. You know that, were you alive, you would not dare to set foot beyond the door without his permission, but you are bolder here, and have grown tired of your own obedience to laws that apply to a system that no longer exists.

You wander the beaches and the mountains, explore the strange dreamscape that your mind and his have created. You always go back before too long, returning early enough so that the only indication you ever left is the sand you track into the vast entry hall.

But eventually you tire of this as well, and a night comes when the sun rises on the horizon and you do not return to your prison.

Rather, you wander his land further than you ever have. You recognize this bit of coastline from your maps- Nepeta’s hive is a mere seven nights journey from here.

Madly, and not knowing what you hope to find, you walk to the northwest, towards her cave.

You do not sleep.

You do not know what you hope to find.

At the end of the first night, an hour after when he usually returns to his hive, you hear a roar.

It is deafening, shakes the ground around you and sets needles of pain driving through your brain.

Your run.

Three days past without rest, and you have lost count of the miles you’ve travelled. Your head sags, your feet move on their own accord. You often close your eyes only to open them later in an entirely new area. The moons and sun are the only indication you’ve not been going in circles.

On the fourth day you reach the edge.

You can go no further- his land is vast, vaster than you could have imagined such a poisoned mind could remember, vaster than you would have though he had ever explored-

But it is not vast enough.

You come to the shining, curving wall of the bubble, and you collapse.

 

* * *

 

You do not know how long it takes him to find you, how long he has been looking. Has he been looking since that first night when his roar of rage shook the earth beneath you? Or has he waited patiently, knowing where you are trying to go and that you will never get there. Sometimes he seems a beast, mindless and ravenous. At others he seems an artist of sorts, one who wields destruction as his medium and with it forges new worlds.

He may well be both.

You do not know which one his is when he finds you.

(he may well be neither, or both, or nothing at all. He has always defied your attempts to put him safely away into one category or another. He is chaos incarnate, and your death and his continued life has not changed that in the least)

In any case, he does find you. One moment he isn’t there and next he is, breathing heavily and smelling of seat and copper and rage. You don’t see him so much as hear and smell him. His footsteps are contradictorily soft for a troll his size, but everything about him is contradiction, so.

He pulls you away from the wall, cursing you beneath his breath. You flop gracelessly where he drops you. You are aware of him straddling you, his hands on your neck, checking your pulse.

You’d laugh if you could, but you can’t.

You are choking again, though no hands grip your throat. You wonder if the lines thin, between death and dream, out here near the edge of the world.

I looked for you, he whispers. ALL OVER THIS DAMN ROCK, ZAHHAK. But you hid yourself from me, why would you go and do a hurting thing like THAT?

I didn’t hide, you would tell him if you had air. You just couldn’t find me. It’s funny, how things like that play out through the lifetimes, when you break the deal.

When you bring yourself to open your eyes, it hits you that he’s not as big as he used to be, that he doesn’t hilariously dwarf you anymore

It isn’t until you’re back in the hive (a mere flash step away, when he knows where he’s going) that you realize.

He didn’t shrink

You grew

It’s not the only way you grow.

For the first few months after your disappearance, he locks you in his block. It’s laughable, really. You are Zahhak, the only thing more ridiculous about you than your devotion to him is your strength. That he thinks metal doors and thick stone could keep you there is, frankly, insulting.

Which is why you can’t fathom why you stay.

After the first week of being back you indicate, by way of twisting his respiteblock door off its hinges and into various works of art, that you are bored. Eventually he brings you a husktop.

You don’t know where he possibly could have gotten it from, but it contains every possible learning module ever made, even the ones restricted to the heiress herself.

You learn.

Eventually you find your ancestor’s journals, discover his secret to controlling his strength, his temper-

You grow.

You learn and you grow and _grow_ , because you are _nothing_ and therefore can be **_anything_**.

 

* * *

 

One day you wake upon a new Alternia that is not Alternia, and he is there, and he is scorned, and you are hurt and broken and awake for the first time in too long. Memories that are not your own flood your mind, and the pain that comes with them breaks your heart in twain.

You are, in short, whole.

And when you wake, for the first time in so _very_ long, you feel that you truly hate him.

You hate him for the nights you spent weak and shivering in his hive, for damning you to sharing minds with that cruel, heartless machine.

For keeping you from the side of the only person in all the universe who has _ever_ needed you.

And yet-

And _yet._

You still love him.

(You stupid, silly fool)


End file.
